_ Pain Management If You've Been Diagnosed with Shingles By Jane Farrell article Shingles is a disease that affects nerves and causes pain and blisters in adults. ItΓÇÖs caused by the same varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox in children. After you recover from chickenpox, the virus doesnΓÇÖt leave your body, but continues to live in some nerve cells. For reasons that aren't totally understood, the virus can become active instead of remaining inactive. When it's activated in adults, it produces shingles. Most adults live with the varicella-zoster virus in their body and never get shingles.
_ Hep C Could Become a Rare Disease By Sondra Forsyth article Newly implemented screening guidelines and improved, highly effective drug therapies could make hepatitis C a rare disease in the United States by 2036, according to the results of a predictive model developed at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. The results of the analysis, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and performed with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, were published in the August 5th 2014 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
_ Rituals Help With Asthma Med Adherence By Sondra Forsyth article Storing asthma medications in the bathroom and establishing taking the drugs as part of a daily routine may be helpful advice that doctors can give their older asthmatic patients who struggle to remember to stick to their medication schedule. ThatΓÇÖs the finding of a study done at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, which discusses how elderly asthmatics cope with taking their inhaled corticosteroid medication as prescribed. The report was published August 5th 2014 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
_ Sex The Foods of Love By Jane Farrell article By Eve Marx Aphrodisiacs are aromatic foods, recipes and potions believed to be sexual and sensual enhancers found in nature. Many of these potent love tools and libido lifters have been in use for centuries. There are dozens of known aphrodisiacs in the world. Is it time for you to learn about some of them? Essential oils that do more than smooth
_ Medical Care Pharmacists Could Boost Drug Adherence By Sondra Forsyth article Community pharmacists can dramatically help their patients stick to their prescription regimens, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. The findings, published on August 4th 2014 in Health Affairs, suggest also that greater adherence to medications can lead to a reduction in emergency room visits and hospital admissions, thereby lowering health care costs for a variety of chronic conditions including diabetes and asthma.
_ Pain Management Six Truths About Pain By Jane Farrell article If youΓÇÖve ever wanted to speak up about your pain but didnΓÇÖt quite dare because you didnΓÇÖt want to ΓÇ£complain,ΓÇ¥ or wondered whether it was normal, the experts at the National Institute on Aging have want to shatter some pain myths. Here are a few of the untruths about pain ΓÇô and what the reality actually is: Most people don't have to live with pain. There are pain treatments that work for most people. If your doctor has not been able to help you, ask to see a pain specialist.
5 Surprising Reasons a Good Relationship Is the Best Stress Reliever in the World By blog The stress response was our secret weapon for success through most of human history. It saved our lives, making us run from predators and enabling us to take down prey. The problem is that we are no longer responding to a wild animal attack that might occur once every six months, but instead we are dealing with hundreds of stresses every day. Human beings are turning on the same life-saving physical reaction to cope with aging parents, unhappy teenagers, costly gasoline, increasing food prices, traffic jams, and job insecurity.
_ Obesity Clue to Curbing Obesity By Sondra Forsyth article Preventing weight gain, obesity, and ultimately diabetes could be as simple as keeping a nuclear receptor from being activated in a small part of the brain, according to a study done by Yale School of Medicine researchers andp ublished in the August 1st 2014 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI).
_ Don't Get Fooled by Poison Ivy By Jane Farrell article If you think you know what poison ivy looks like, think again. Poison ivy can take the form of a vine, shrub or ground cover. It has leaves that are shiny and leaves that are dull. Its edges can be smoothed or notched. So how can it be recognized and avoided? The old phrase ΓÇ£leaves of three,ΓÇ¥ let it beΓÇ¥ is a good way to do it, says Lou Paradise, president and chief of research of Topical BioMedics, Inc., makers of Topricin.
_ Medical Care ΓÇ£Lab Developed TestsΓÇ¥: FDA to Ensure Reliability By Sondra Forsyth article On July 31st 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took important steps to ensure that certain tests used by health care professionals to help diagnose and treat patients provide accurate, consistent and reliable results.
_ Obesity Hope for the Overweight & Diabetics By Sondra Forsyth article Researchers in Germany and at Harvard have succeeded in distinguishing the various types of fat cells in the body on the basis of their surface proteins. This discovery is raising hope for a new method to treat those suffering from obesity and diabetes. The team was headed by Dr. Siegfried Ussar from the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity (IDO) at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center/ Helmholtz Zentrum M├╝nchen, partner of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), and Professor C. Ronald Kahn from the Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School.
_ Complicated Grief: When Sorrow Is Overwhelming By Jane Farrell article Losing a loved one is one of the most distressing and, unfortunately, common experiences people face. Most people experiencing normal grief and bereavement have a period of sorrow, numbness, and even guilt and anger. Gradually these feelings ease, and it's possible to accept loss and move forward. For some people, feelings of loss are debilitating and don't improve even after time passes. This is known as complicated grief. In complicated grief, painful emotions are so long lasting and severe that you have trouble accepting the loss and resuming your own life.
_ Breast Cancer Acupuncture Helps Breast Ca Patients By Sondra Forsyth article Use of electroacupuncture (EA) ΓÇô a form of acupuncture where a small electric current is passed between pairs of acupuncture needles ΓÇô produces significant improvements in fatigue, anxiety and depression in as little as eight weeks for early stage breast cancer patients experiencing joint pain related to the use of aromatase inhibitors (AIs). That is the finding of a randomized, placebo-controlled trial examining the intervention led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published online in July 2014 in the journal Cancer.
Five Trials Are Targeting Alzheimer's By Jane Farrell blog Recently I noticed a tweet from TIME magazine about some new research trials focusing on AlzheimerΓÇÖs disease. Intrigued, I visited their website to learn more. The headline - ΓÇ£5 Groundbreaking Drugs are Testing Ways to Prevent AlzheimerΓÇÖs - is what caught my attention. I love the words ΓÇ£groundbreakingΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£preventΓÇ¥ ΓÇö especially when they are used in connection with AlzheimerΓÇÖs disease or another type of dementia.
_ Kidney Disease Drug Halves Risk of Kidney Transplant Rejection By Sondra Forsyth article Oxford University scientists in the UK have shown that a powerful drug given at the time of a kidney transplant operation not only halves the early risk of rejection, but that it also allows a less toxic regimen of anti-rejection drugs to be used after the operation.
_ Sex Restarting Your Sex Life By Jane Farrell article Normal aging brings physical changes in both men and women. These changes sometimes affect the ability to have and enjoy sex. A woman may notice changes in her vagina. As a woman ages, her vagina can shorten and narrow. Her vaginal walls can become thinner and also a little stiffer. Most women will have less vaginal lubrication. These changes could affect sexual function and/or pleasure.
_ Multiple Sclerosis Cell Therapy for Multiple Sclerosis By Sondra Forsyth article Scientists at The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute are one step closer to creating a viable cell replacement therapy for multiple sclerosis from a patient's own cells.
_ Parkinson's Disease Anti-Inflammatory Drug for Parkinson's By Sondra Forsyth article An experimental anti-inflammatory drug can protect vulnerable neurons and reduce motor deficits in a rat model of Parkinson's disease, according to researchers at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. The results were published in July 2014 the Journal of Parkinson's Disease.